Tuesday, September 12, 2006

eDonkey Firm to Pay RIAA $30 Million

MetaMachine, the company behind the popular file sharing software eDonkey, has agreed to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $30 million to settle claims it facilitated mass copyright infringement.

"With this new settlement, another domino falls, and we have further strengthened the footing of the legal marketplace," said RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Bainwol. The RIAA previously settled with the operators of BearShare, i2Hub, WinMX, and Grokster.

As part of the settlement, MetaMachine has agreed to cease distributing eDonkey, eDonkey 2000, Overnet and other variants of the peer-to-peer software. However, the company previously announced its intention to throw in the towel last year, after the Supreme Court ruled file sharing networks could be liable for the actions of their users.